Who knew shit could taste so good?! There is nothing I would enjoy more then to dry some of this shit, crush this shit, run pressurized water through it, and enjoy every last drop of the oily water! Confused yet? I know, personally, if someone was going to tell me that they were going to drink something that came for poo, I would be a little confused… and very skeptical… Well, as it turns out, what they’re really doing is waiting for coffee beans to be eaten, digested, and excreted from the Asian Palm Civet, and making coffee from it!

Kind of looks like an Baby Ruth… no?

These coffee beans are called Kopi Luwak, and are the most expensive coffee in the world! How expensive? Well, it sells for between $120 and $600 US dollars per pound! It’s really quite something… The civets will eat the coffee berries, the bean (inside the berry) will pass through their system undigested, and will come out with a decreased amount of caffeine, and a unique palette of tastes (none of which are shitty!).

The reason for such a high price isn’t a hard answer to come up with… for instance… the workers have to follow around a weasel-like rodent waiting it to shit…. does that help a little? What about the fact that the civets can only eat and shit so much (Low Quantity)? And if its increasing the flavors in the coffee bean, this means it’s going to be an increase in demand for coffee connoisseurs!

This makes me wonder about people using this information to make money… If the civet-poo coffee is so delicious, why not put them onto farms, feed them beans, and harvest the poo? Of course people do this! But I wonder about the quality… If in a nature setting these civets create masterful coffee beans, what happens when you collect them, feed them a food substitute as well as coffee cherries, and then collect their poo? It probably won’t be as authentic as the real product, nor as high quality. Unfortunately this is all true, and new processes, such as chemically stimulating the civet’s digestive system, have been developed in order to create more and more of a supply…

Well… I am yet to try Kopi Luwak… Our local coffee roaster Cupper’s brought it in once, but there is no way I can afford upwards to $100 dollars a pound for coffee on a tight university budget. Someday… someday I will get to indulge in flavors that have been created by sitting in a animals crap factory…!